420: A pictorial autobiography - 60 years of Des!

Prompted, in part, by several military friends and acquaintances who have recently posted Facebook statuses of themselves at the beginning of their career, I thought I would try something similar but over a longer period - i.e. the whole of my life thus far. Here we go then: a caterpillar metamorphosing into a beautiful butterfly, or, perhaps, a scabby old moth.

Part 1: The early years

Above: My first, and only, foray into acting. Erith Grammar School 1965. Left: looking very smug having presumably just mastered 1950s Lego. No glasses, must be a very very old picture.

A very young Apprentice Radio Technician at the Army Apprentices College. Harrogate. 1967.

Having transferred to the Royal Army Pay Corps in late 1969, here I am in Cyprus in Summer 1971. The last pic without a moustache!

Part II: Soldier on.......
24 years service in the Royal Army Pay Corps. Postings/attachments to The Gordon Highlanders, The Life Guards, The Cheshire Regiment, 39 Engineer Regiment, The British Embassy Moscow 1978-1980,The Royal Military Police, The RAPC Computer Centre and Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. It wasn't all work and no play though, as you can see here: 

Entertaining HM Ambassador and staff Xmas 79

Burns night at the Embassy dacha  Jan 1980

One of many formal dinner nights

A formal dinner almost at the end of our Russian language course. Somebody, perhaps unwisely, decided to play Boney M's Rasputin. Cue drunken dancing on the table!

Part III - The Royal Auxiliary Air Force

10 very interesting years as a Russian Interpreter in the RAuxAF. Here are just a few of the highlights:

	Above: meeting HM The Queen on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the RAuxAF. 2005 Left: Helping out the Royal Navy during a ship visit to St Petersburg. 2004
Squadron Training in Cyprus 2006	2005. At a dedication ceremony to the Russian ship Varyag, scuttled off the West coast of Scotland.

Part IV - Teaching English - in Moscow, Warsaw and Salou

Moscow, of course, couldn't be anywhere else!

Lodz (pronounced Woodz) in Poland

Part V - Sports (Marathons, hill walking, fishing, sailing, horse riding

Ben Nevis with my son Gareth. 2007
	Above: Rutland Water with Dave Grundy 2016 Left: Russian (Zavidovo) 1979 with a much younger daughter
Above and right: fishing off Ascension Island

Part VI - and the fun just goes on and on....

With daughter, Mo, at the RAF Club

Cheers!

419: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the train

Haven't written a blog for 6 weeks. A little bit remiss, but really I haven't been travelling very much lately. I remedied that at the weekend by taking the train to Madrid (via Valencia) on Friday and back to Salou (via camp de Tarragona) on Sunday. On the AVE train on Friday the speed was being displayed on a screen in each carriage and I marvelled as we hurtled through the countryside at speeds of up to 300 km/h. I remember daydreaming and wondering what prompted people to vote for Brexit. I can't imagine trains in UK ever reaching anything like that speed. Especially once we become socially and politically isolated when the drawbridge has been pulled up and the portcullis lowered. But this is not the platform for political diatribe against Brexiters. Talking about platforms, Madrid's Atocha railway station is, I think, the largest I have ever seen anywhere. It services suburban, regional, and high-speed AVE trains and part of it is given over to a large display of greenery - perhaps a lot of it taken from the nearby botanical gardens. On Friday evening it was a simple matter of changing from AVE to a suburban train to allow onward travel to my hotel, but on Sunday it took forever to find an exit to the street. I put my little wheelie suitcase in to left luggage and went for a wander around the city. When I came back a couple of hours later I was amazed by the length of the queue to put items into left luggage. Almost as long as that at the Prado. Not quite, of course. That queue wound round and round and reminded me of the old Soviet times when people queued for hours to visit Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square.

I spent much of Saturday on one of those open-topped tourist buses that now operate in many of the world's capital cities. I don't often use them as I think they are quite expensive. But perhaps one of the few benefits of being 'slightly' old is that pensioners rates are often applicable. Such was the case here. A 22 Euro ticket became 10 Euros for senior citizens. The hop-on, hop-off nature of these buses means that as anything 'takes your fancy' on the way round you can get off and explore in greater detail and then get back on to continue the tour. There are two separate routes around Madrid, the 'historical' tour and the 'city centre' tour. I managed them both.Here are a few of the pictures I took.

A quick video to finish off, to remind me of the rain pounding on the roof of the train as it whizzed through the countryside from Madrid to camp de Tarragona. I also quite liked Rex Harrison's quote "the majesty and grandeur of the English language is the greatest possession we have". (Notwithstanding that grandeur is originally from French).